Are You a Prescription Sharer?

April 29, 2008 -- One in four Americans shares prescription drugs with others
-- and opens a Pandora's box of risk.

This suggestion of widespread drug sharing comes from a pilot study in which
researchers interviewed 700 people in 10 U.S. cities. It's the first study to
take a broad look at what people say about "loaning" and
"borrowing" prescription medications.

About 23% of the people interviewed loaned medicines, and about 27% borrowed
them, find Richard C. Goldsworthy, PhD, of Academic Edge Inc. and
colleagues.

"Whether this sharing is beneficial or detrimental depends on what is
shared and for what reason," Goldsworthy tells WebMD. "But we found a
lot of situations where sharing can be detrimental -- in ways we don't always
think about."

Art Poremba, MS, manager of ambulatory pharmacy services at the University
of Michigan health service, knows people sometimes share their drugs, but he's surprised at
how many appear to do it. Poremba was not involved in the Goldsworthy
study.

"This bypasses all the key safety elements in our health care
system," Poremba tells WebMD. "This amounts to self-diagnosis and
self-prescribing. It could be people end up with inappropriate drugs, with
inappropriate dosages, with something someone is allergic to, or with the
totally wrong drug for what the person is taking it for."

"If people are sharing antibiotics, if they have enough left over, it
means they didn't take the drug as prescribed -- so now they have some
antibiotic-resistant bugs left over," he says. "And the person they
share with isn't getting a full dose, so they'll have more drug-resistant bugs.
With one in five people sharing antibiotics, it's reasonable that this
contributes to the growing problem of antibiotic-resistant infections."

Who's sharing the drugs? According to the study:

More whites (23%) and Hispanics (26%) share drugs than do African-Americans
(13.5%).

More women (24%) than men (12%) share drugs.

What makes people more willing to share drugs? The study shows that:

39.4% of respondents said they'd share drugs with a family member.

38.6% of respondents said they'd share drugs if they had a prescription for
it, but ran out or didn't have it with them.

37.9% of respondents said they'd share drugs if they had an emergency.